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Issue Details:
First known date:
1978...
1978
An Imaginary Life : A Novel
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'In prose that is both elegant and lyrical, David Malouf departs from the little-known facts of Ovid's exile beyond the pale of civilization to create a deeply moving novel of extraordinary beauty. An outcast in a vast wasteland at the edge of the Black Sea, Ovid discovers a feral child. As he teaches the boy to speak the language of the civilized world, the child tutors him in his own tongue, the language of nature, and the once barren landscape begins to resonate with meaning.' (Publisher's blurb)
Adaptations
-
An Imaginary Life
1986
single work
drama
A stage adaptation of David Malouf's novel about the friendship between the exiled Ovid and a feral child.
Notes
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Dedication: To Christopher.
- Other formats: Also braille, sound recording.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Provocatively Calm : On David Malouf as Essayist
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , no. 39 2017; ''This article examines the essays of David Malouf, many of which have been recently collected in three thematic volumes: A First Place (2014a), The Writing Life (2014b) and Being There (2015). My starting point is to argue that Malouf’s most important essays are politically charged. As a writer-activist he posits distinctive, sometimes controversial, positions, arguing strongly and passionately for alternative ways of thinking about Australia and the world, and indeed alternative ways for human beings to move through, and participate in, the world. However, Malouf is no firebrand: the tone of his essays is relentlessly calm; he brings together the emphatic and the empathetic, and he still tries to convince the reader. This article focuses on the political implications of Malouf’s calm but opinionated approach to his essays, as well as on how Malouf sets out to persuade readers. (Introduction) -
Book Culture, A Delicate Balance
2016
single work
essay
— Appears in: #SaveOzStories 2016;'The ecology of a culture may be as fragile, as precariously balanced, as the one we call Nature. We should be very sure of how that balance has been achieved and continues to work before we think of adjusting or ‘improving’ it.' (Introduction)
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Australia and the Post-Colonial Novel
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Quadrant , October vol. 59 no. 10 2015; (p. 70-73) -
The Case for David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 15 July 2014;
— Review of An Imaginary Life : A Novel 1978 single work novel -
Homo Ferus : The Unification of the Human and the Environmental in David Malouf's An Imaginary Life
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Scrutiny2 , vol. 19 no. 2 2014; (p. 8-29) 'This essay presents a postcolonial, ecocritical reading of Australian author David Malouf's celebrated novel, An imaginary life (1978). By now an important name in contemporary postcolonial literature, Malouf has yet to be discussed as an author who attempts to explode both colonial and human-centred myths and tropes in a manner that promotes a linguistically sensitive, body- and nature-centred vision. As this essay will argue, Malouf's writing, in its critique of Enlightenment values that have led to the racial classification of humans and modernity's dismissal of the importance of the environment, advances a unique postcolonial and ecological aesthetic. One way in which An imaginary life interrogates Enlightenment values is through its interest in the figure of the “feral child”, a “discovery” or construction of the Enlightenment era itself. The term “feral child” derives from Linnaeus's category “Homo ferus”, appearing in the tenth edition of his Systema naturae (The system of nature). Classified alongside Linnaeus's racial human categories (like Homo Afer and Homo Europaeus), Homo ferus emerges concurrently with the colonial obsession with racial “otherness”. For Malouf, however, the feral human eludes the categorisation of taxonomy specifically and language in general: blurring the “human” and “nature”, it undermines the scientific classification of humankind, and without language, it embodies the possibility of human being-in-nature beyond the influence of symbolic enculturation. In An imaginary life, the wordless immersion of the feral child in the environment allegorises the novel's intention – to produce another form of language, a poetic, allusive language transcending classification and chronology, and enacting the unification of the “human” and the “natural”.' (Publication abstract)
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Untitled
1978
single work
review
— Appears in: New Republic , 13 May no. 178 1978; (p. 36)
— Review of An Imaginary Life : A Novel 1978 single work novel -
Untitled
1978
single work
review
— Appears in: New Statesman , 15 September no. 96 1978; (p. 338)
— Review of An Imaginary Life : A Novel 1978 single work novel -
Untitled
1978
single work
review
— Appears in: Library Journal , 1 March no. 103 1978; (p. 587)
— Review of An Imaginary Life : A Novel 1978 single work novel -
The Parable of the Child and the Nose
1978
single work
review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 17 October vol. 99 no. 5131 1978; (p. 75-76)
— Review of An Imaginary Life : A Novel 1978 single work novel -
Printout
1978
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 20 May 1978; (p. 17)
— Review of An Imaginary Life : A Novel 1978 single work novel -
Culture and Identity : Politics and Writing in Some Recent Post-Colonial Texts
1992
single work
criticism
— Appears in: From Commonwealth to Post-Colonial 1992; (p. 436-443) -
Problems of Historicity in David Malouf's An Imaginary Life
2000
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Classical & Modern Literature , vol. 20 no. 1 2000; (p. 1-17) -
David Malouf's An Imaginary Life : A Return to the Very Edge of Memory, History and the Multicultural Self
2002
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Narrativa i Historia 2002; (p. 37-59) Explores the relationship between history, autobiography and fiction in Malouf's novel. -
Constructing the Post-Colonial Male Body
1998
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Body in the Library 1998; (p. 207-223)Discusses the representations of the male body and identity in Australian art and literature.
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David Malouf's Language of Reconciliation : Stylistic Patterns in An Imaginary Life
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Literature and Aesthetics , June vol. 14 no. 1 2004; (p. 49-66) Uses a linguistic model to analyse the lexico-grammar of two excerpts from Malouf's novel and to show 'Malouf's brilliance in crafting language to convey the theme of the novel' (65).
Awards
- 1979 winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Fiction
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